Having worked on, and with Macs for over 20 years, I believe I have a fairly good grasp of how different systems, files, and file formats have evolved on the Mac platform over the years.
However, being fairly new to Macintosh emulation (but not new to emulation by any stretch of the imagination), I've struggled a bit with some of the various file formats I've encountered on this site, and getting them to work with some of the various Mac emulators available.
I can only imagine the problems someone new to both the Mac, and Mac emulation must be facing.
In order to understand where I'm coming from, it's necessary to tell a short story (I tend to ramble sometimes, but I'll try and keep this brief... 
)
The original copy of 'Uninvited' on this site was corrupted, and in my efforts to find a replacement, I finally located an individual who had a working copy, and was willing to share.
The problem was getting he file to me. He was running Mini vMac on a Windows machine, and moving the file from his emulated Mac environment, to his Windows hard drive, compressing the file and sending it to me was destroying the file.
After about a week, we were about to give up, when, in a fit of desperation (and a moment of 'Duh' on my part, I sent him a zipped, blank disk image (formatted within Mini vMac), and had him mount the image, copy the files, unmount the image, re-compress (zip) it, and send it back to me.
Success!
It seems that compressing (zipping) a Classic Mac application will destroy it's resource fork, rendering the application unusable.
However, if the files are contained in a disk image file, the disk image can be zipped without damaging the contents.
This got me to thinking about the files stored and made available here at MG.
I notice that many of the files (especially the older ones) are stored in various Stuffit (.sit) formats, and many are further processed in .bin, or .hqx formats, among others.
For the sake of consistency, and compatibility, I would like to propose the following-
- From this time forward, all submissions to Macintosh Garden be made in the form of files uncompressed where appropriate (excepting where files are in the form of an installer, or Self-Extracting Archive (.sea) ) contained within a Disk Image File (.img or .dmg), said disk image to be formatted with a Macintosh Operation System not to exceed version 7.5.5 (This insures a proper HFS Standard format, Systems prior to 8.1 cannot read an HFS+ format).
- Disk Image Files to be compressed with a standard 'Zip' format. No '7z'. No further processing, as even a large disk image, with a small file will compress down to a reasonable size when zipped.
- Extra files (Cover Art, cheat files, external documentation, any files not included on an original disk) to be contained in a folder, along with the disk image. The entire flder is then zipped as a single archive, to keep the files together.
- Existing files on MG be reprocessed to conform to the above standards. I realize that this is a tall order, and I stand ready to assist in any way possible. It will take time, but the end result will be a consistent, and compatible collection of files useable by any of the existing Macintosh emulators, on any platform.
I am not a moderator of this site. This is just a proposal. I welcome discussion and debate, and would like to know what the community at large thinks.
I'll be watching this topic, and I also welcome anyone with questions to contact me directly at mame...@mac.com .
Thank you for your attention.
